


Oasis

by vestigialstell



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:44:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4267272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vestigialstell/pseuds/vestigialstell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max goes where he must to find food and water and gas. </p><p>Before Furiosa it felt like surviving. </p><p>Max isn’t sure what to call it now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oasis

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta, for cheerleading and editing.

Max goes where he must to find food and water and gas. 

Before Furiosa it felt like surviving. 

Max isn’t sure what to call it now.

That isn’t all that uncommon for him. He’s out of practice speaking. He’s usually alone except for the dead, and he’s long since given up talking to them.

They still talk to him though. They scream and rage and demand his attention until he’s half blind with the visions and deaf to the world around him.

When the dead are so angry he can barely function he grabs what he can and he gets in his car. He wastes his gas driving all day and night just to catch a glimpse of the Citadel.

He never gets close enough for the people to see him, never actually goes in. He just sits and watches. 

The panic and anxiety in his brain bleeds away a little bit when he sees the Citadel greener than he left it. There are trees growing on the butte now, and sometimes he sees bright splashes of color. Flowers, he guesses, but it's been so long since he last saw such a thing that he can’t be sure.

Sometimes he sees patrols pass by him on the dunes. 

The first time he visited, a patrol cut him off and tried to capture him. The warboys were stronger and smarter for having known Furiosa, but so was Max. He’d sent them home battered and bruised and missing six guns.

They rarely come close anymore.

On the occasions that they do drive up next to him, one of the girls is always in the car. Furiosa visits him too, but not in a patrol vehicle.

The Dag and Cheedo are attached at the hip now, reveling in the freedom to be safe and together. The Dag gave him a human skull filled with damp soil and a blooming cactus. Cheedo gave him a tentative smile. He learns later that they’ve taken over the gardens and that the top of the buttes are their domain, full to bursting with food. None of the citizens of the Citadel go hungry under their watch. 

Capable he sees often, driving over the dunes with horrified warboys clinging to the car to avoid getting thrown off. The first time she pulled up next to him, one of the warboys lunged out the car and retched into the sand. Capable had looked worried, but the warboy had just given her a shaky thumbs up and promised he was fine. She had managed to adopt them all, and they loved her the way people love the sun after a long cold night. 

It was Toast who had happened upon him first. He had a gun pointed at the idling car when she leaned out the window and smiled at him cockily. He put the gun down as Toast slung two bags over her shoulder and climbed out of the patrol vehicle. The warboys stayed in the car. 

Max walked out to meet her halfway across the sands.

He didn’t say anything as she approached, just watched how sure her steps were, how well made her clothes were. Her eyes were bright. She was healthy and whole, as strong physically now as she had been mentally when they first met on Fury Road.

The wind changed direction and he could smell the oil and gunpowder on her skin. Her hands were open and relaxed and he saw callouses on them that weren’t there before. The largest ones weren’t callouses of labor, though Toast had those as well. These were callouses of warfare from the recoil of a gun and the repetitive pulling of a trigger. Toast could defend herself now. 

Later, he finds out from Furiosa that Toast has taken over the defense of the Citadel. Furiosa laughs when she tells him, bright and happy, delighted at the way the wives are steadily making her unnecessary. She looks forward to that day, when the girls stand fully on their own, when Furiosa is just there to be a friend, not a crutch. 

Toast handed him a bag. He pulled it open to find food. Vegetables and fruits he couldn’t name and bread and flasks upon flasks of water. There were also two guns.

"The bullets for the handgun are in here, along with some shells for the flare gun," Toast had said, handing him the second bag. "There's some medicine and bandages too. We've also got gas for you, in the VW."

She turned to the patrol car and the warboys scrambled to pull out two large plastic tanks of gas. They were still watching Max warily but the mix of love and awe in their eyes when they looked at Toast outweighed their dislike of helping a supposed stranger.

Max snarled at them when they got too close to his car and the warboys jumped back, but Toast’s warning tsk kept him from intimidating them further. They put the tanks in the back of the Coupe and scramble back to their vehicle. Max chuckled quietly and Toast sighed in exasperated fondness.

"We're here for you,” she said. “All of us. The Dag, Cheedo, Capable, Furiosa and I. Even the warboys, though they don’t recognize you. Send up a flare if you need us. We've got food, water, shelter and protection, whenever you need it."

Max awkwardly patted her shoulder in thanks and settled the bags across his shoulders, balancing the weight before he walked to his car and uncapped one of the tanks of gas. He was careful not to spill when he filled up his car. The Citadel may be rich in resources, but Max was just a man, and he would conserve where he could.

His car was nearly bone dry and he poured an entire canister of fuel into his tank. He had been running on fumes, pushing past the safe limits of risk in his blind need to see the Citadel. He set the two canisters, one empty, one full, in the back of his car and strapped them down.

"Come back in one piece,” Toast said and walked back to the patrol car, warboys scattering to get out of her path. Max's lips twitched and he rode away with a lighter heart.

When he opened the second bag for inspection later that night he found more than bullets and medicine. There’s a shirt, made of the cloth that the girls used to wear. 

He ripped his old shirt struggling out of it. The new shirt fit him better.

When he ducked his head to his collar it smelled of gunpowder and sweat and the damp dirt of gardens.

For the first time in years he smiled, broad and true.


End file.
